Accounting offers courses within four subject areas that a Chief of Accounting, a CFO, or an auditor normally work with. You may choose to specialize in one area by picking all elective courses from this area, or you may choose a broad competence by picking courses from several areas.
Reporting
Financial reporting is about the preparation and reading of financial reports that are prepared for external communication. The reporting shall present the financial performance and economic health of a business. For the readers, it is essential to be able to conduct proper financial reporting analyses, whether they are investors, creditors, or other users that use financial information for economic decisions or to evaluate management of the business.
In many jurisdictions, financial reporting is regulated in Accounting Laws and Accounting Standards. These laws and standards are based on concepts that are important to understand both when preparing and when reading financial reports. Moreover, the laws and standards leave much judgment to the preparer of the financial report. Good reporting requires good judgment.
For financial reporting, the Accounting major pays most attention to the international accounting standards, IFRS, which are mandatory for listed companies and increasingly important for private companies. The major also pays attention to nonprofit and governmental entities’ significant role in our society, and their reporting needs that may be different from the needs of private companies.
Companies have corporate social responsibility (CSR), and report to their stakeholders and society how they perform. This reporting has developed significantly in the last years, and students will learn how to report on CSR and evaluate how firms are performing.
Internal control and audit
Internal control and audit is about processes that increase confidence in financial reports and ensure compliance with laws and regulations. It takes an internal perspective by discussing how internal control routines can ensure high quality in an entity’s reporting and reduce risk for fraud and mistakes. It also takes an external perspective by teaching students how to conduct an audit of financial reports, including how to assess the quality of risk management and internal control procedures.
Tax and corporate law
In this subject area, students will learn about laws that are essential for organizing businesses and operating internationally. You will learn corporate laws – with focus on Norwegian laws, including topics such as how to form a limited company, do stock issues, do mergers and demergers, etc. You will learn how taxes and tax planning are important for business, both the importance of tax compliance and the magnitude of tax as an expense for the company. Hence, you will learn both national and international corporate tax rules, and tax planning in an ethical context.
Valuation and analysis
Valuation is about the valuation of companies and shares, and of assets and liabilities in a company. Valuation is important both for investing decisions and for measuring assets and liabilities in the financial reports. Much valuation is based on judgmental assumptions, and it is important both for the preparer and for the receiver of valuations to understand the effect of judgment in the valuations.